typical mnc situation

i am a fresh cs graduate .. after a long long wait, i have been able to get a job as trainee software engineer in a company [removed by moderator] (my earlier post was removed as i had used the name of the company directly )

My real aim was to get a job as a java or c# developer with a decent salary(thats where my passion is)...but this came along and i have to take this offer due to universal reasons that require people to stay employed..

i dont even mind getting mainframes as i like to code,even though people say that it doesn't have future.... but testing is something that does not seem interesting to me..

and after a small research, i have come to know that this is a common problem with mncs at least in India...

Now my doubt is..if i am forced to take up jobs in some technology which is not java or .net, would i be able to get what i really want after a few years working here?
I mean what would you do if you were in such a situation and you are just dying to make world class web apps??

I'd work hard at the job that you don't love, and spend my free time making webpages for friends, family, local businesses, anything to be actually doing what you want. You are building a portfolio. Once its impressive, you can start looking for a job that lets you do what you love.

I always recommend doing what you love, over doing what pays well. In the long term, you'll do a better job at what you love and get rewarded for that.

I think there is a problem in the software industry, and its not companies requiring testers. The problem is that fresh graduates have this huge bias against testers. I know because I was one of those programmers who looked down upon testers. It's when I became roommates with one, and got intellectually challenged by another that I built respect for them.

Testing is not a bad job. It may not pay as well as a coding job initially, but it pays decent enough. IMO, there is better scope for growth in testing, because all the other comp sci graduates are fighting among themselves to get the developer position. Testing is not a bad job. It can be as intellectually challenging as you want it to be. Sure, the day to day testing can get to be little tiresome, just like day to day coding can be too. But, there are so many problems that you can solve that developers cannot focus on. You can figure out ways to automate testing, find unique ways to break the application, find ways to test performance. Testing can be as innovative as development. Heck, open the source code and find potential bugs. You are in an unique postion to keep the customer's needs in focus and close enough to the technology to do something about it.

The best tester I knew made it her mission to break the app. Beyond the standard use cases, she would just find weird things to do. If everything else fails, she would open the source code and try to find faults. Once she found something in the code, she would build a test case to exploit it. She was almost scientific in her approach to breaking things

Jayesh A Lalwani wrote:The best tester I knew made it her mission to break the app. Beyond the standard use cases, she would just find weird things to do. If everything else fails, she would open the source code and try to find faults. Once she found something in the code, she would build a test case to exploit it. She was almost scientific in her approach to breaking things

Sounds like a great QA person. When it works well, the QA person finds bugs. Which drives the Dev team to write better quality code, which makes it harder for the QA team.
It becomes a challenge:

Exactly. The best developer says "You can never break my code". The best QA says "I can break anything". Breaking something that is well made requires the same amount of creativity as making something well. Testing is not a second class job. It's as important and challenging as a coding job.